What is considered bad Ping Rates and how does it affect player performance?

I was talking to a clan mate (who is much better than me) and he was complaining about his ping going up to 60 or 70. I had to laugh because I would be happy with 60. Over the weekend I was lucky to be below 100.

When does ping become an issue? Can a good player still be good with pings over 100?

PIng generally means little and is just a sign of latency. What should concern you is dramatic packet loss. I.E. that little green light next to your ping. When that turns red you are experiencing lag.

So for example my ping normally sits at around 300-330 however last night even at 300 ping I was completely lagging out.

Ping measures how long it takes packets from your computer to reach the destination server, measured in milliseconds. A ping of 100 ms means that it's taking 1/10th of a second for your packets to be received. Obviously, the longer it takes for the server to receive your packets, the further "behind" the game you are. With a ping of 500, the server is seeing what you did a full half of a second after you did it, and this obviously creates problems. I don't usually start noticing problems in game unless my ping is 200 or more. There is also a second connection issue called packet loss, in which the packets sent by your machine are never received by by the server. This can create problems like ghost shots. The little red lag indicator means that you're dropping packets, even if your ping is fine.

So yeah, as long as it doesn't jump around it shouldn't be a problem to anyone. The only real issue is when you are trying to get someone who is about to run through a corner you are guarding, by the time you spot it, he could be well past the point where you can shoot him... but that doesn't happen too often and it's also something that has to do with how quickly the server does the spotting checks.

I think good ping is under 100. The key is that it has to be regular, you can't have it fluctuating up and down in a non-predictable manner. It definitely affects player play, I get about 40 ms on East and 120 on West, and it's noticeably more difficult to play on West. Anything over 200, I would probably just stop playing, not worth the lag.

first, 1000ms ping = 1 second. so if you had 1000 ping (in game only goes to 999) you would have a 1 second delay before your tank did what you told it to.

for most internet games, *consistent* latency of 300ms or less is perfectly playable and you would hardly notice it.

for "twitch" games, latency of less than 100ms is preferred. WoT is somewhere between these two.

packetloss is when the stream of data is interrupted between you and the server because 1 packet of data was lost or destroyed and had to be retransmitted. this causes a small burst of ping, since you have to make the round trip over again of asking the server for the missing data, then the server retransmitting it. also this slows down data processing because nothing that happens after that packet will be done until its replacement is received and the stream is in order again. This is seen in game when tanks "pause" or "rubberband".

the game uses TCP communication. if it used UDP, the missing packet would simply be ignored and the game would correct for it later (missing telemetry would be assumed, then when a new packet came in, rebuilt) you see this in games like Everquest, as players appear to be running straight, then warp to some place else because they turned and you missed a packet. for the client, they dont see this happen, the client is "trusted". this allows for hacks. thats why WoT uses TCP instead. the client is not trusted, nothing happens until the server OKs it.

When does ping become an issue? Can a good player still be good with pings over 100?

It becomes an issue around 350ms or higher (assuming no packet losses) where it begins to affect tank control and firing. Shooting scouts will be difficult and you will have to develop pre-aim skill that takes into account the jumping reticle and target. First contact in a peekaboo, you will always be at the disadvantage. They peek, get a full 1-2 secs immunity before they show up in your view. This can be problematic vs blues and purples when they start baiting you to get your shot off and hopefully miss. Also, knife fight and brawls is a lot harder at high ping.

You can still be good till about 300ms. Develop superior strategy & tactics rather than relying on the twitchy side of WoT.

Still, I'd guesstimate 2-3% WR loss due to high ping when compared to your own clone < 100ms.

Ping measures how long it takes packets from your computer to reach the destination server, measured in milliseconds. A ping of 100 ms means that it's taking 1/10th of a second for your packets to be received. Obviously, the longer it takes for the server to receive your packets, the further "behind" the game you are. With a ping of 500, the server is seeing what you did a full half of a second after you did it, and this obviously creates problems. I don't usually start noticing problems in game unless my ping is 200 or more. There is also a second connection issue called packet loss, in which the packets sent by your machine are never received by by the server. This can create problems like ghost shots. The little red lag indicator means that you're dropping packets, even if your ping is fine.

This is a fairly good summary.

By and large your geographic location sets how fast your ping can be. Of course there are fluctuations and oddities, but in general if you are within a couple hundred miles of the east server, you will get pings of about 30 ms. It drops about 1 ms per 20 miles distance from there.

Does it make a difference? YES!

Check out the geographic locations of players. You will see a steady dropoff in average player stats as you move further away from the server.

For a lot of the ingame actions, there are actually several 'round trip' packets that have to complete in order to complete the action. Think of an action as a sequence like 'spotting' someone, aiming, shooting, and withdrawing to cover.

At every step of that sequence the faster ping player comes out ahead.

Imagine 2 players, one with 25 ms ping, the other with 100 ms ping. Most actions require a 'round trip' of action, and update. So the 25 ms player has a sustained 150 ms advantage over the other guy. In a 'fast twitch' game like this, 150 ms is HUGE!

I'm in the midwest and get about 85 ms ping on average. I went on a trip last fall that got me closer to the east server. I played for hours at a 55 ms ping. What a difference that made! It was IMMEDIATELY noticeable! You just don't realize how big even that small of a ping difference is until you experience it!